Category: Channels

Canceling or Postponing an Analyst Event? Make the Best of the Situation

  In late winter and early spring, my schedule is usually jam-packed with IT industry analyst events and analyst tracks at customer events. But this year, my calendar is gradually thinning out as coronavirus takes its toll and more and more vendors decide to cancel or postpone their events. From a public (and personal!) health perspective, this is clearly a good call. The virus conti...

Considerations for UCC Vendors in the SMB Market

The market opportunity for UCC vendors in the U.S. SMB segment is around $4.5B for 2016—and growing. According to SMB Group’s recently completed 2016 Small and Medium Business Communication, Collaboration and Mobility Study, although just 12% of small businesses (companies with less than 100 employees) and 28% of medium businesses (companies with 100 to 1,000 employees) currently use UCC soluti...

IBM’s Managed Service Provider Initiatives for Midmarket: An Interview with Mike McClurg

Here’s an edited transcript of my interview with Mike McClurg, VP of Global Midmarket Sales for IBM. [If you’d like to listen to the recorded podcast, click on the orange circle below]. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/60487573" iframe="true" /] Laurie: Mike, thanks so much for joining us today. Before we dive into our conversation a...

Cisco OnPlus: IT Infrastructure Advisory and Management Services Solution For Small Businesses

--by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group Last month, Cisco introduced a new IT Infrastructure advisory and management service solution designed for VARs to provide to small businesses with less than 100 employees. Delivered via Cisco’s value-added reseller (VAR) channel, Cisco OnPlus enables VARs to offload the mundane, time-consuming tasks of managing a network environmen...